


Brain teaser

by hazk



Category: Hunter X Hunter
Genre: Canon Compliant, Friendship, Gen, Greed Island Arc, Writing Exercise
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-11-30
Updated: 2018-11-30
Packaged: 2019-09-02 15:41:04
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,438
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16789861
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/hazk/pseuds/hazk
Summary: Training montages have never been so intense.





	Brain teaser

Running after indescribable creatures, capturing wildlife, seeking out treasure, speeding through one race after another… Each quest a step in collecting all the needed cards, and earn some experience along the way…

Days of hard work and even harder training, and yet: It had been nothing compared to the hell they were now in, left on their own by Bisky.

Bisky must have known what she was leaving them to do, Killua had decided an hour in – she must have been delighted to know this would be the last straw to ruin them. Honestly, he should have realised it the moment she had slipped out with an excuse he no longer even remembered.

Or something like that.

Damn had Killua been happy to get to work on another task with Gon, without Bicky's constant watch. Just one, not out of spite but for the simple fun of it all.

It should have been easy for them to handle this one on their own; but then again, if it had been, Bisky wouldn’t have even felt the need to leave.

Killua could only feel like they were screwed without Bisky, not that he would ever admit it. She fricking knew, anyway.

“Killua…”

“Yeah. Yeah, I know.”

Two rooms in and three more to go, but only if they were able to follow the main path through. At least that should be the case if they believed the NPC that had showed them to the labyrinth in the first place.

“I hate this.”

Gon’s words carried a weight that didn’t take Killua by surprise anymore, what with him certain his own was the same way. As a reply, he sighed like an old man, before sharing a look with Gon.

Without another word, the two of them knocked on the door in front of them in unison.

The first room had been kinda fun, Killua supposed, and so had the start of the second. Though it felt like forever ago now.

Their mood had dropped fast.

There was nothing adventurous about the challenge of the ‘labyrinth’. Even the correct route through was clearly indicated by signs, and every other door was locked unless you failed to pass through the marked ones first; and, the NPC had said, the altering route would be no easier to get through. Just different. So it would do them no good to give up unless they really felt like they had to.

And that’s where the problem lies. The problem, which was something worthy of a headache:

To pass each door onto the next corridor, they had to solve a puzzle.

_A puzzle._

With the third room opening in front of them, Killua let out yet another, pained, sigh. Gon and him were, technically, half way through the maze, _maybe five hours in_ , and there was no doubt in his mind that they were not going be able to solve every room on the main pathway.

There was no way. Killua knew perfectly well that, up until now, they had been lucky.

The answer to the first riddle Killua had known right off the bat. The second room, on the other hand, had had a literal jigsaw puzzle which, while simple enough, _had taken them_ _five-whole-hours to complete_.

Looking at the room they had stepped in, the third seemed to be something entirely different and Killua hated it already. No matter how pretty the place was, it had to be that way to deceive him. Had to be.

The room was brightly lit, the light sources hidden in the corners of the ceiling and underneath some deep green vines. The walls were made of solid rock, its surface appearing manually carved to be as reflective as possible as the light bounced off it, towards a platform placed in the middle of the square space.

Gon seemed to brighten up by the sight of it alone, his curiosity breaking through their slump as he rushed in to look through the area. Most likely he was just thankful to be done with the puzzle and able to take in something all-new again, and at least that Killua could agree with.

Stepping forward, towards the platform, they noticed a moat of water, only a few inches wide, streaming along its path through the room. The platform it circled wasn’t too tall, only just reaching their chests in height, and the material contrasted the otherwise natural look of the room. It was made out of metal and, carved on it, were the silhouettes of three men reaching their hands up, as if to throw three circular shapes in the air.

What really caught their attention, though, was what the platform was supporting: a box just about the size of a playing card, also made out of metal, was placed on top of a flimsy looking frame that connected to the four corners of the platform.

“Is it the card?” Gon asked and took a hurried step forward, Killua following close behind him.

“Already? We’re only halfway through”, Killua said as the two of them stopped behind the moat to take a better look at the box.

From this close, they could see that the top of the platform, underneath the box and its supporting frame, was the shape of a bowl and filled with water. Below the surface, a wide array of multi-coloured marbles, the size of a blueberry, were sparkling thanks to the lighting of the room.

A few of the same marbles were littered around the room, Killua then noticed, both on top of the bowl and on the ground by their feet. There were some in the moat as well, being gently pushed along by the current.

It would be just their luck to slip on them.

“…What are we supposed to do?” Gon asked suddenly, his eyes roaming the otherwise empty looking room before turning to face Killua in confusion. Unlike before, they were now surrounded with a calm space and very little instruction.

Killua could only shrug.

“There’s got to be something we’re missing. Let’s just look around…?”

Before long, what with the platform being the only actual thing they could be looking at, they spotted their clue. The tiny box, with its own, detailed carvings, had something written on its side.

“Wait, wait, wait…” Killua squinted at the few short lines of text. Reading the plate out loud, his eye twitched in annoyance as he realised just what they had walked in on:

_“One link, held in hands. Grounded or it burns.”_

Gon practically let out a groan, his shoulders slumping as he immediately let his interest drop at the obvious riddle they were about to face. He picked up on the words only to say, sullenly: “In hands? Should we just pick it up?” He didn’t mean it, though.

Killua cringed, matching the look on Gon’s face before sighing, again. “Yeah… Let’s not.” They had both caught on to the warning in the words, but impatience was their enemy. It always had been; Bisky had taken special care to make them aware of that much.

The two of them stood in front of the stand, barely holding themselves straight, before forcing their feet, and brain, to start working.

With his eyebrows crunched low, Gon took a step back to stare at the stand, huffing to himself as he walked around it in thought. Minutes passed in silence, but not nearly as many as Killua had been preparing himself for.

“Oh, I know!”

In just a few more seconds, Killua was shown just what Gon had, in fact, figured out.

Kneeling on the ground, Gon had picked up one of the glass marbles that had been lying innocently by the moat. Killua had barely any time to flinch at the movement, suddenly prepared for repercussions on taking any wrong steps, before Gon had already settled down by the foot of the stand.

Gon pointed at the carving of the three figures, their arms in the air, and grinned brightly up at Killua. “It's like they are playing catch!”

“Uh…” He wasn’t wrong, Killua thought as he, too, leaned down to look at the carving again. He took in the carved silhouettes and focused on the shapes above them. “You think the marble goes there?” Killua frowned at the figures, noting how the three almost seemed to be praising the round, circular spaces above their hands.

“Don’t you?” Gon asked and rolled the marble in his hand. The one he had picked up was bright blue in colour and, as he held it closer to the carving, Killua could see the shade being reflected off the surface of the metal.

“Eh…” Killua looked at Gon and then back at the carving, nodding to himself as he eyed the indentations that he could now see being the exact same size as the marbles. The slots weren’t carved any deeper than the figures, though, and there was no sign of a mechanism they could be connected to. “Why blue?”

Three figures, with three empty circles above their reaching hands. No colours.

Gon smiled and scratched his cheek. “Does it matter?”

“It might?” Killua threw back, still eyeing the marble in Gon’s hand and crunching his nose at it. “And anyway, if it fits, should we put one marble in each circle?”

“The riddle talked about one link, so…”

“One link…” Killua looked up at the box and rose back to his feet, to read the inscription again: “One link, held in hands. Grounded or it burns.”

Gon frowned, racking his brain despite how tired and done they both were already. “The figures aren’t holding the marble, though; it would be above them. But… Uhm, the platform, it connects the box to the ground.”

“Grounded… Like electricity?” Killua mumbled, for the first time reaching a hand closer to the platform where he could, in fact, feel the quiet stream of electricity coursing off the surface of the metal. That made Gon’s eyes brighten.

“Right! That! I, I don’t really remember how it works, but…”

“But; you really, really shouldn’t touch it. I mean, I could…” Killua found himself smirking as the realisation hit him. If electricity really was all they were worrying about here, it would be very unlikely for it to be any kind of a problem for him.

Still, seemingly not picking up on Killua’s words, Gon tapped his cheek in deep thought before glancing up at his friend again. “So, all we got to do is… link the stand to the ground, right? Something like that…”

“Metal box, metal stand and a metal frame on top, sitting in water. Yeah. Something like that”, Killua snorted. “How the hell would placing a marble in a slot ‘ground it’, then?”

“I don’t know. I mean, I don’t think we need to know”, Gon replied with a hum. “Sometimes there is no obvious answer, and you just got to trust what you’re being told…”

Killua blinked. He felt his mind clear, as he asked:

“The three slots, then… Wanna put marbles in all three, or pick just one?”

Either way, Killua would be the one to touch the box. It would be fine, but here’s the thing: Killua did want them to beat the game, every step of the way. There was no need for him to get unnecessarily burned as long as they figured out how not to.

Gon bit his lip and rolled the marble between his thumb and index finger. “One link? One?”

“One. Okay.” Killua dropped back down next to Gon and took a breath. “One. Held in hands.”

“Six hands…” Gon mumbled, studying the three human carvings. “Oh”, he whispered as it hit him, gesturing between the two figures standing at the edges of the stand. “They’re the only two pointing in the same direction!”

The hands held towards the middle peeked out from behind the figure stood in the middle. The angle was off, Killua noted as he took a proper look at the figures and their wide-open arms, with the two on the sides reaching a little more for each other than the other four arms held up.

“One link and two hands, in this case.”

“Is that… okay?” Gon asked, seeking for a more solid confirmation on his idea. “It would be really simple, wouldn’t it?”

“Not really? I mean”, Killua scoffed, “it’s just weird, honestly. And anyway, most of the people on Greed Island probably suck at shit like this… They’re all about fighting so the puzzles aren’t designed to be too bad, maybe?”

Killua’s frown got deeper the more he thought about it, looking back up at the box now looming over them. “The first room was basically a joke almost everyone’s heard once or twice before, and in the second you just had to be prepared to spend some time to get the jigsaw right, what with there being no food here…

“It’s all about patience. Be frustrated enough and you’d just try to get the box, or kick the door down… And the room’s probably all nice-looking only to distract people from the lack of difficulty, when the ‘riddle’ literally just tells you exactly what’s going on. There aren’t many other options.”

Killua snorted at his own words, shaking his head at the carving that was the only actual detail the room had to offer. They would have had to be idiots to miss it.

“So…” Gon said, them both turning their eyes back at the marble. “This is good enough, then.”

“Yeah. Just…” Killua gestured a hand vaguely at the marble, only to get a questioning look from Gon. Killua sighed, preparing himself. “I’ll do it, okay?”

And yes, maybe Killua was a little surprised to see Gon nod without a word in edgewise, holding out the marble for him to take. He had already gotten ready to argue about it.

It was obviously better for Killua to be the one to do this, just in case it somehow went wrong.

Still, as Killua pressed the marble towards the slot in the middle, Gon’s eyes wide with excitement as he followed the movement, he did find himself believing it would be fine. He trusted the puzzle like he trusted their reasoning but, more than that, what truly stuck with him was the electric-blue marble he held in his fingers.

Gon wouldn’t have given him the marble if he had thought for a second that they were wrong about this, Killua had realised just as the piece slotted in place.

Electricity or not, Gon would never so willingly let anyone take the hit for him.

**Author's Note:**

> Normally I like things complicated and built on angst, but my brain hasn’t been working for ages sooo… Greed Island’s the way to go; games, games, games, with an attempt at depth! For the puzzle, inspiration came from The Room games, but I wish I had the imagination for something better than I did here.


End file.
